Leftovers

• Futurism ☛ Man Operating Robot Accidentally Makes It Kick Him Directly in the Nutsack

  Happy New Year!

• IP Kat ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Flattery will get you nowhere - But don't stop trying

• NYPost ☛ Will Smith sued for sexual harassment, accused of ‘deliberately grooming’ tour violinist

  A lawsuit reveals that Will Smith has been accused of sexual harassment by Brian King Joseph.

• Hackaday ☛ Trace Tracing To The Tunes

  Some kind of continuity beeper has been a standard piece of gear since the dawn of electronics. Sure, you probably have an ohm meter, but sometimes you don’t care about the actual resistance. You just want to know whether something connects or doesn’t, especially with a PCB trace or a cable. But what if your beeper could tell you more? [Nick Cornford] asks and answers that question with a beeper that lets you estimate resistance via pitch.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] We discovered an ancient ‘party boat’ in the waters of Alexandria – here’s what might have happened on board

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Humans could have as many as 33 senses

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] The magic of maths: festive puzzles to give your brain and imagination a workout

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Festive maths puzzles – answers and explanations

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] The evolution of digital nomadism: from hi-tech hacker spaces to crypto coworking

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Biophobia: why some people hate nature – and what you can do about it

• Hardware

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Winner, Name That Ware November 2025

  • Hackaday ☛ Jon Peddie’s The Graphics Chip Chronicles On Graphics Controller History

    Using computers that feature a high-resolution, full-color graphical interface is commonplace today, but it took a lot of effort and ingenuity to get to this point. This long history is the topic of [Dr. Jon Peddie]’s article series called The Graphics Chip Chronicles. In the first of eight volumes, the early days of the NEC µPD7220 and the burgeoning IBM PC.

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A Steam Loco These Days Is Nothing But Hacks

    The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR)’s T1 class is famous for many reasons: being enormous, being a duplex, possibly having beaten Mallard’s speed record while no one was looking… and being in production in the 21st century. That last fact is down to the redoubtable work by the PRR T1 Steam Locomotive Trust, who continued their efforts to reproduce an example of these remarkable and lamentably unpreserved locomotives in the year 2025.

  • Hackaday ☛ Putting A Cheapo 1800W DC-DC Boost Converter To The Test

    These days ready-to-use DC-DC converters are everywhere, with some of the cheaper ones even being safe to use without an immediate risk to life and limb(s). This piques one’s curiosity when browsing various online shopping platforms that are quite literally flooded with e.g. QS-4884CCCV-1800W clones of a DC-DC boost converter. Do they really manage 1800 Watt even without active cooling? Are they perhaps a good deal? These were some of the questions that [Josh] over at the [Signal Drift] channel set out to answer.

  • Hackaday ☛ The Cutting Truth About Variable Capacitors

    If you’ve seen a big air-variable capacitor, you may have noticed that some of the plates may have slots cut into them. Why? [Mr Carlson] has the answer in the video below. The short answer: you can bend the tabs formed by the slots to increase or decrease the capacitance by tiny amounts for the purpose of tuning.

  • Hackaday ☛ Our New Years Wish Is To Hide In A Giant Pokéball

    Between the news, the world situation, and the inevitable family stresses that come this time of year, well — one could be excused for feeling a certain amount of envy for those adorable pocket monsters who spend their time hidden away in red-and-white orbs. [carlos3dprint] evidently did, but he didn’t just dream of cozy concave solitude: he made it happen, with 3D printing and way too much post-processing.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] US approve Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill for weight loss

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] [Guest post] Deepfake technology and the law: Perspectives from the UK and the EU (Part 1)

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] [Guest post] Deepfake technology and the law: Perspectives from Japan, South Korea, and China (Part 2)

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] [Guest post] Deepfake technology and the law: Perspectives from the creative and technology sectors (Part 3)

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] [Guest post] Deepfake technology and the law: Perspectives from the policy and civil society sectors (Part 4)

• Security

  • LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (imagemagick and net-snmp), Fedora (delve, golang-github-google-wire, and golang-github-googlecloudplatform-cloudsql-proxy), and SUSE (podman, python3, and python36).

  • APNIC ☛ Three of the best: Security

    Internet security risks are constant and expensive. Here are the top three posts related to security for 2025.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan’s president vows to defend sovereignty after China drills

    Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te vowed on Thursday to defend the democratic island’s sovereignty in a New Year’s speech, after China carried out military drills. Beijing launched missiles and deployed dozens of fighter jets, navy ships and coastguard vessels this week to encircle Taiwan’s main island, in exercises condemned by Taipei as “highly provocative”.

  • France24 ☛ Xi to host South Korea’s Lee in Beijing as China seeks to bolster regional ties

    Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping will host South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on a state visit beginning on Sunday, a diplomatic signal of Beijing’s push to deepen ties with Seoul as relations with Japan remain strained over Taiwan and regional security.

  • France24 ☛ Iran protests turn deadly: Government has offered dialogue in face of demonstrations

    A member of Iran’s security forces was killed, marking the first reported death after several days of demonstrations over soaring inflation, in what has been the most significant unrest in the country since nationwide protests three years ago. Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Lund University, Rouzbeh Parsi, shares his insights.

  • NYPost ☛ Jewish civil rights group demands answers from Mamdani after posts about combating antisemitism scrubbed from NYC mayor’s X account

    "It sends a message, whether intended or not, that Jewish New Yorkers are uniquely underserving of continuity, clarity, or reassurance from their own government."

  • The Straits Times ☛ Thailand sees annual foreign tourist arrivals slow to 33 million

    This was the first annual drop in international arrivals in a decade outside the pandemic period.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-22 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini unveils new class of warship named after himself

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] UK police arrest Greta Thunberg under Terrorism Act

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] UK: Russell Brand charged with two more sex offenses

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] The Uprisings in Bangladesh Will Not Be Stopped

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ ‘White Rex’ lives: Ukrainian military intelligence says it faked killing of neo-Nazi militia commander to fool Russia — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Another New Year at War: Ukraine’s Troops Doubt It Will Be the Last

      After a year of Russian advances, the goal for 2026 is simply to survive, said one officer in eastern Ukraine. “It’s hard to make any plans,” he said.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Brings In New Year Saying Ukrainians Want Peace, But Not 'At Any Cost'

      President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the New Year with a speech that stressed a peace agreement with Russia can't come "at any cost" as the two sides traded air strikes, highlighting the divide still to be overcome to stop the war.

    • France24 ☛ Kyiv argues alleged attack on Putin’s home was Russian false-flag operation

      The CIA has concluded that Ukraine did not attempt to target Russian President Vladimir Putin or any of his residences in an attack earlier this week, an allegation Kyiv has firmly denied, saying the Kremlin is using the claim to harden its stance in peace negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. France24 International Affairs commentator Douglas Herbert shares his insights.

    • France24 ☛ Putin voices confidence in war victory

      Meanwhile, Russia says it will provide Washington with evidence that a Ukrainian drone targeted one of Vladimir Putin’s residences before being shot down on Monday, a claim Ukraine firmly denies. France24 International affairs editor Angela Diffley explains.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ Nigeria police detain driver in fatal Joshua car crash

      In tonight's edition, Nigerian police detain the driver of the vehicle involved in the Lagos highway smash in which two people were killed and boxer Anthony Joshua was injured. Also, supporters of Guinea's former junta chief turned president-elect celebrate his win of the weekend's election. And Senegal's leader used his New Year speech to promise that there would be changes in the way that the country tackles  violence against women.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Ryanair faces massive fine in Italy over 'abusive strategy'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Mexican plane carrying burn victims crashes in Texas

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Japan: TEPCO's nuclear restart plan sparks angst

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] North Korea's Kim Jong Un, daughter open luxury resort

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club granted new 3-year lease at historic Central location, gov’t says

    Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) has been given a new three-year lease at its historic Central location, the government has said.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Reuters’ investigation claims Meta tried to deceive regulators over fake ads

    Fearing billions of dollars in lost revenue, Meta Platforms Inc. reportedly developed an internal “playbook” aimed at sidestepping pressure from regulators to crack down on scam advertising on its Facebook (Farcebook) and Instagram platforms.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ ARPANET standardized TCP/IP on this day in 1983 — 43-year-old standard set the foundations for today’s Internet

    On January 1, 1983, ARPANET system architects initiated the cutover from the existing NCP to TCP/IP on all hosts.

Monopolies/Monopsonies